The present invention relates to data communications, and more particularly, to an enhanced customer to company call center communications system in the telecommunications industry.
In the telecommunications industry, call centers are used to provide customer and operator services for business clients. Traditionally, customers of these business clients place a phone call to a toll-free telephone number to reach a call center customer service agent. They are then served over the phone. Often, because of the limited number of agents at a call center and the large number of calls, a customer""s call is placed in a queue until an agent becomes available.
Many customers in the telecommunications industry interact with the Internet and World Wide Web, and use the Web for a variety of business services. This presents a business opportunity to interact with customers who are familiar with browsing the Web, by presenting to the customer a Web site and an opportunity to interact with the telecommunications company. However, the World Wide Web is not an interactive media, and is primarily composed of many static HTML pages at any given Web site.
The customers browsing the Web site may have a need to speak with a customer service agent, either with respect to the Web site and information posted there, or with respect to their transactions with the telecommunications company.
Many companies, including telecommunications companies, maintain call centers to interact with their customers. These call centers may provide order entry clerks for new orders, billing services for resolving problems with invoices, shipments or returns, technical support, and trouble ticketing for customers having a high volume of transactions with the company.
However, given the volume of customer calls, and the company resources available to respond to the calls, most calls to the call center are placed on hold by an automatic call director (xe2x80x9cACDxe2x80x9d), and the initial customer interaction is with an interactive voice response unit (xe2x80x9cVRUxe2x80x9d), which is primarily intended to direct the call to the proper agent, and is not programmed to answer a customer""s questions. This frequently leads to aggravated customers who are unable to resolve their concerns in a timely manner.
The only means presently available to contact a company call center agent and not be placed on hold, is to place a telephone call and submit a call-back request via the telephone, or to send an e-mail request to the xe2x80x9cweb masterxe2x80x9d of the Web site. Current Web services do not allow call-back requests to be submitted via the Web or other interactive means.
The present invention is directed to a call routing system for a Network/enterprise that enables routing of messages, calls, and data between call centers distributed throughout a Network/enterprise. The call routing system for a Network/enterprise particularly invokes a method of locating and reserving skilled agents in one of a plurality of remote centers before initiating a call transfer or conference. Routing of messages, calls, and data between call centers distributed throughout the Network/enterprise is particularly enabled by implementing routing algorithms based on agent skills, agent availability, workflow states, and load balancing to determine the route path. The call routing system may be readily integrated with existing ACDs, as well as email, Voice/video over IP, the H.323 Gateways/Gatekeepers, URL push services, and other distributed communication systems.
Particularly, the present invention is directed to improvements to the telecommunications call center architecture described in co-pending U.S. patent application Ser. No. 08/976,162 assigned to the assignee of the present invention, and incorporated by reference herein. In the telecommunications call center architecture, an Enterprise Contact Server is provided which enables enterprise-level processing and routing of both contact requests and inbound calls originating from any communications source, e.g., standard PSTN telephony, IP telephony, the Web, and other HTTP means. xe2x80x9cEnterprise-level processing and routingxe2x80x9d means that agents at any of a plurality of call centers having a Center Contact Server, may receive a contact request from a customer, and fulfill that request by placing a contact to the customer. A single means for placing contact requests, such as a Web page link or a telephone number, can be used to place contact requests that are supported by the plurality of call centers.
Particularly, each Enterprise Contact Server performs the following functions: 1) it communicates with each call center Contact Server; and, 2) it tracks the states and availabilities of resources (e.g., agents) at each of a plurality of call centers. Specifically, each Center Contact Server sends event messages to the Enterprise Contact Server to continuously update the Enterprise Contact Server with current states and availability data. When a contact request is received, the Enterprise Contact Server determines and selects an available qualified agent among the agents at the plurality of call centers, and then sends the contact request to the Center Contact Server that supports the selected agent.
Advantageously, the present invention can also be used to route inbound calls, i.e., those calls made to a call center via the PSTN, the Internet or other IP telephony network, or virtually any communications means, throughout the network, with the same systems architecture as used on processing and routing contact requests. That is, contact requests are treated as inbound calls, and the same systems architecture, including the Enterprise Contact Server and plurality of call center Contact Servers, is used to process and route both.